Privacy issues for ‘smart city’ debated
Mayor: Draft resolution too general
Being the first “smart city” in Arizona requires working out a lot of details, such as privacy issues. That became apparent Tuesday night during the Yuma City Council’s work session, in which members discussed a draft resolution that would authorize the formation of two committees that would oversee and review the any COMM project.
In August, Yuma entered into a contract with any COMM Holdings Corp. for the installation of a city-wide network of nodes on city infrastructure, such as streetlights and traffic boxes. The devices have the ability to provide lighting control, a giga bit speed wireless mesh network, cellular carrier offload capabilities, digital video recording and other uses. The project is being done in conjunction with a conversion to LED streetlights by Siemens Industry.
The council reviewed a draft resolution outlining how the city may use the data obtained from the devices “to ensure that legal privacy and rights of citizens are protected.” The draft document was meant to give the council a chance to “digest” the information and suggest changes, City Administrator Greg Wilkinson said.
Mayor Doug Nicholls did not think it went far enough in addressing privacy issues and that he had been expecting more “explicit” details on how the city could and could not use the technology “so there isn’t room for violation of personal rights or monitoring or abuse of the system.”
Nicholls was especially concerned that the technology would be used to invade people’s privacy and monitor their activities without warrants, such as using it for facial recognition or identifying people’s vehicles. He also asked for more detailed criteria for using the technology in real time during emergency and nonemergency situations.
He acknowledged that the proposed committees would help in “keeping us in check.” The twopage draft resolution authorizes the formation of a Citizens Oversight Committee consisting of the mayor and four citizens appointed by the council. It would “meet at least semiannually to provide oversight and review the purpose for accessing city information and data collected by the nodes.”
The document would also authorize the city administrator to form a Review Committee “to provide operations, oversight, internal policies and procedures for all access and retrieval of information and data collected by the nodes.
Wilkinson pointed out that the city is already allowed to do some of the activities brought up by Nicholls without warrants, such as using license plate readers. He said he was concerned that the resolution would contain “restrictions that we don’t need.”
Nicholls said his concerns were based on those voiced by citizens. He called the document “too general.”
Wilkinson said that the draft resolution indicated that the only time data from the nodes could be used would be after a crime has been committed. It could be used by law enforcement to identify suspects, for example, in cases of graffiti taggings or shootings. He noted that listing every possible scenario where it can or cannot be used would be impossible.
The draft document notes that real-time surveillance can’t be conducted without a warrant and that it allows police to access data collected by the nodes “post event,” such as a car accident.
Wilkinson clarified that listening capabilities could not be used to monitor “people’s private yards” but could be used to investigate gunshots.
The draft also states that only the city will be allowed direct access to the data, live or recorded, and notes that until accessed by city staff, such data is not in the possession of the city and therefore not subject to public records requests, which would be handled by the Review Committee.
Nicholls stressed the need to be “clear on what we’re doing” and said this project has to be as “transparent” as possible.
Wilkinson called the discussion a good start and noted that staff will work with the council and citizens “to strike that balance to make sure when we really need it for felonies we can use the system to its full capabilities and there is no abuse.”